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Niall Ferguson writes on our country’s global retreat.
Since former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke uttered the word “taper” in June 2013, emerging-market stocks and currencies have taken a beating. It is not clear why talk of (thus far) modest reductions in the Fed’s large-scale asset-purchase program should have had such big repercussions outside the United States. The best economic explanation is that capital has been flowing out of emerging markets in anticipation of future rises in U.S. interest rates, of which the taper is a harbinger. While plausible, that cannot be the whole story.
For it is not only U.S. monetary policy that is being tapered. Even more significant is the “geopolitical taper.” By this I mean the fundamental shift we are witnessing in the national-security strategy of the U.S.—and like the Fed’s tapering, this one also means big repercussions for the world. To see the geopolitical taper at work, consider President Obama’s comment Wednesday on the horrific killings of protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The president said: “There will be consequences if people step over the line.”
No one took that warning seriously—Ukrainian government snipers kept on killing people in Independence Square regardless. The world remembers the red line that Mr. Obama once drew over the use of chemical weapons in Syria . . . and then ignored once the line had been crossed. The compromise deal reached on Friday in Ukraine calling for early elections and a coalition government may or may not spell the end of the crisis. In any case, the negotiations were conducted without concern for Mr. Obama. …
Power Line with a picture of what can happen when diplomacy fails.
The Obama administration’s Syria policy has been a fiasco. I don’t think anyone seriously tries to defend it. That said, the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in that country is not the responsibility of the U.S. government. It is the fault of Bashar Assad and his minions, and al Qaeda and other radical Muslims who have forcibly taken over the opposition to Assad. The human catastrophe in Syria is almost beyond reckoning. You can look up the numbers, but what stunned me was this photograph, taken late last month. The scene is Yarmouk, a district of Damascus that is populated largely by Palestinian “refugees” and has been the scene of heavy fighting. The U.N. gained access to Yarmouk and passed out food there. These people are hoping to get something to eat.
Craig Pirrong has added president “uncontested arrival” to the lexicon of president bystander, president news cycle, etc., etc. . . .
I have repeatedly called the administration’s policies in Syria and vis a vis Russia “feckless.” This was intended to be a damning insult. But it just isn’t insulting enough.
Why do I say that? The White House told CNN that the Russian takeover of Ukraine isn’t an invasion. Get this: It’s an “uncontested arrival.”
You know, just like the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudetenland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.
Only Orwell can do justice to such a monstrous formulation:
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” …
More on Ukraine from Prof. Pirrong.
… Why is Putin moving so quickly? I think this is overdetermined. A mixture of personal/subjective and objective/pragmatic considerations.
First, as I said from the very early days of this blog, Putin is a man in a hurry: it is part of his nature. His impatience was no doubt increased by the burning desire to revenge what he views as a personal humiliation inflicted on him by the Ukrainian revolutionaries at the climax of his Olympic extravaganza.
Second, Ukraine is in a chaotic state, as is every government in the immediate aftermath of a revolution. The military is no doubt reeling and riven by dissent and rivalry. The government has little idea of which units and commanders it can rely on. There is no experienced competent authority in place, especially in the defense and interior ministries. There cannot be a unity of command in such circumstances. Moreover, parts of the country are ripe for putsches by fifth columns supported and guided by Moscow. (During the Cold War, Soviet operational plans for an invasion of Europe included extensive provisions for sowing chaos in rear areas, including by fomenting civil unrest.) A disorganized, chaotic polity is much easier picking than would be the case in a few months, or even a few weeks, when it has had time to get its feet under it.
Third, Putin has taken the measure of his opponents in the West, and found them lacking. Note the timing. Within mere hours of Obama’s craven and empty warning, Putin moves to war. He knows he has nothing to fear from Obama. Obama’s warning turned out to be less of a deterrent, and more of an invitation. …
… A couple of other points must be made.
First, this has to be the most complete public humiliation inflicted on any American president ever. Obama gave what he thought was a stern warning, and within hours Putin defied it with relish. Such defiance is a sign of complete disrespect. …
Remember when Sarah Palin was mocked during the 2008 campaign for saying obama’s evident weakness of character would tempt Putin to invade Ukraine? Breitbart remembered.
Palin said then:
“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”
For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.
In light of recent events in Ukraine and concerns that Russia is getting its troops ready to cross the border into the neighboring nation, nobody seems to be laughing at or dismissing those comments now. …
John Lott who was roundly abused by Piers Morgan gets to pen the send-off.
Sunday’s announcement that Piers Morgan had lost his show at CNN was hardly unexpected.
The ratings for the coveted 9 p.m. time slot were abysmal, dropping last week to just 270,000 viewers — about one-eighth of what Fox News’s Megyn Kelly got in the same time slot.
Some, such as Variety magazine, have speculated that the low ratings are due to Morgan’s single-minded push for gun control. That might have something to do with it, but much more is going on.
In all the thousands of television and radio interviews that I have done over the years, my appearances on Morgan’s show have generated more immediate e-mails than any other show that I have ever been on.
The response made one thing immediately obvious: Only the most diehard gun-control advocates watched his show. But even some of them were unwilling to listen to his abuse.
Americans like a lively debate, but Morgan failed one basic rule: to debate the issue itself rather than make everything personal.
For instance, he yelled at Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?”
He has referred to me as a “liar” and a “clown” and attacked the shape of my “weird pointy bushy eyebrows” that are deformed because of surgery that I had as a kid to remove a tumor. …